In lode del sultano: analisi di un panegirico persiano del XII secolo

The Saljuqid author Owḥad al-din Anvari of Abivard (12th C.E.) has traditionally been considered one of the three “prophets” of Persian poetry, and the master of the qaṣide genre. He was well renowned for his ability in effortlessly building highly sophisticated and complex images, often quite hard to understand even with a commentary. We know almost nothing about his biography since, as for many other medieval authors, much of the available information on his life has been handed down to us by biographical anthologies (taẕkere) written centuries after his death. We are therefore forced to limit ourselves to the information directly inferable from his divān (collection of poems). He certainly composed many panegyrics in honour of various members of the Saljuqid court, some of which are dedicated to Sultan Sanjar himself. Among them the most famous is certainly the one beginning with the opening line «gar del o dast baḥr o kān bāšad // del o dast-e xodāygān bāšad» (If a heart and a hand were to be a sea and a mine // they would be the sovereign’s heart and hand). Its importance is underlined by the fact it appears as the divān’s first poem in many old manuscripts and it was subsequently considered Anvari’s first poem by the author of the Taẕkerat al-šoʿarā (Memories of Poets), Dowlatšāh Samarqandi, and by many others after him. This article will give a full transcription and translation, as well as a commentary, of this qaṣide, relying both on its text as presented in Modarres-e Reżavi’s edition (1959-1961) and on the one offered by the two oldest dated manuscripts that have not been used by the editor.